


Maybe It’s All a Dream

by philsdrill



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Dan Howell - Freeform, Dreams, Existential Crisis, Fluff, M/M, Multiverse, Oneshot, Phan - Freeform, Phan Fluff, Phandom - Freeform, Phil Lester - Freeform, Sleep, phanfluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 08:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14305083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philsdrill/pseuds/philsdrill
Summary: It takes some love from Phil to get Dan up after his late night web browsing put him in a state of reality questioning existential crisis. Fluff.





	Maybe It’s All a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> If you happen to have read this before, I posted this in May 2016 on tumblr. Also if anyone's interested in following me on tumblr - I'm more active on there and there's more fics - you can find me at [philsdrill](https://philsdrill.tumblr.com).

**Phil's POV:**

The morning started much like any other. I got up and did a bit of tidying around the flat while I waited for Dan to wake up. It was pretty unusual for him to be up before me. As much as I didn’t want to, I finished the dishes from last night’s dinner. One of us would have to do it sometime. While putting the dried parsley away in the cupboard, I felt my stomach rumble at the sight of the food. I hoped Dan would be up soon so I didn’t have to eat breakfast without him. That would ruin our routine; we had a habit of watching anime while eating breakfast together and to quote Dan, “It’s quite a good system.”

Another half hour passed by and Dan still hadn’t emerged from his room. It was now past the time he usually would get up. I was going to bet he’d stayed up ridiculously late on tumblr or wikipedia or something. Either that or he was ill; I hoped he wasn’t ill. I decided that I’d go and investigate and check he was okay.

I wandered the short distance along the hallway from our kitchen to his bedroom and knocked on the door, “Dan are you up?”

Dan replied with a groan and instantly I was worried; maybe he was ill, “Hey, can I come in?”

To this Dan didn’t reply, so I hesitantly opened the door and walked in anyway. As soon as I walked past the end of the door and looked to my left, I was greeted by the sight of his figure lying face down on the bed.

“Dan, are you feeling okay?” I asked him, sitting down on the edge of his bed and gently placing a hand on his shoulder, “What’s up?”

“Not really,” he mumbled, “I was reading this really interesting article about multiverse theory last night and it got me thinking about how there could be all these parallel universes where I’m slightly different and then I realised there could be one where I never met you and I don’t think I’d be here today if that hadn’t happened. Then I clicked on some other article on someone’s theory that all this is a dream and then when we die we’ll wake up and realise how pointless it all was. What is the point?”

It seemed he was having one of his existential crises; they happened every so often, no matter what he did or how happy he was feeling, he would still end up questioning reality or the point in existence from time to time. Although I didn’t really have any idea how to get him out of it, I’d been here before and knew I could help at least a little bit.

“Dan, you’re doing a great job; you’re making other people happy. It doesn’t matter if this won’t matter eventually because it matters now,” I told him, now rubbing my hand up and down on his shoulder, trying to be comforting and bring him back to reality.

“Hmmm,” he hummed, not sounding entirely convinced.

“Do you have any idea how much sleep you got?” I asked him, as he sounded really tired.

“I think I went to bed at four… and maybe didn’t get to sleep until six,” he started, “I kept waking up though… and then someone started drilling outside at eight. I don’t know; it’s too early for maths and my brain hurts.”

“I would let you sleep more, but it would mess up your sleep schedule even more than it already is,” I told him.

“I don’t care,” he voiced into his pillow.

“Dan, I think it would be best for you to get up and do something to distract you from all these thoughts,” I told him, “It’s not doing you any good lying in bed and thinking about it.”

“C’mon,” I said, giving his shoulder a playful shake, “I’ll go and get you breakfast and a coffee and you can get crunchyroll loaded up.”

“Alright,” Dan groaned, turning over and rubbing his eyes.

I reached for Dan’s laptop that lay on the other side of the bed and handed it to him, “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” Dan mumbled, drearily peering through half-shut eyes at his laptop.

“I’ll go and make breakfast,” I told him, “What do you want? Just cereal and a coffee?”

“Yeah, that’ll be good,” he replied, “Could you get me some painkillers or something too? Got a bit of a headache from all that over-thinking.”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied, “You’ll be okay for five minutes though? I’ll bring them with everything else.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” he said, starting to push himself up into a seated position.

I went straight to the kitchen, wanting to get back to Dan as soon as I could. I didn’t want to leave him alone with his thoughts for too long. I poured two bowls of Dan’s cereal and added the right amount of milk. I put the kettle on for coffee, and while it was boiling, pulled a packet of paracetamol out of the cupboard. I filled a glass of water, and once the kettle was boiled, finished making the coffee.

It took me two trips to get everything to Dan’s room. Some people might’ve been able to manage it all at once, but knowing me, I’d have some sort of incident and spill cereal and coffee everywhere. I took the coffee, water and paracetamol the first time and then went back for the cereal. I sat down next to Dan on his bed and handed him the water as he took the painkillers.

“You’ll feel better soon,” I reminded him.

“Thanks Phil,” he replied, “I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“It’s okay,” I said, thinking that maybe now wasn’t the best time to joke about how he’d still be lying face down in a black hole of thought.

Dan hit play on the anime, the next episode of Death Note that we hadn’t watched. We ate our breakfast together, two sets of eyes focused on Dan’s MacBook screen in front of us. Periodically, I would glance over at him, and I was happy to see he was smiling. The distraction seemed to be working. I’m sure the thoughts were still lingering at the back of his head, but if he could keep his mind off them for long enough, they would eventually diminish into nothing.

When I finished my cereal, I put my bowl to the side. A few minutes later, Dan did the same. As he leant back from reaching out to the bedside table, he leaned closer into me.

“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, sliding a little closer to me still, so that our bodies were touching.

“No, it’s absolutely fine,” I told him, putting an arm around him, “Relax.”

Dan continued to watch the episode, but I found myself getting a little distracted, thinking about how nice this was. Even though Dan was sometimes against showing affection, it’s okay when it’s just the two of us. He needed that extra little bit more love when he was having a crisis, and I was glad he let me give it to him.

In a way, I would say I’m thankful he has me, because I wouldn’t want him to be like this all alone. I never liked when I had to leave him alone for a few days when I went up to see my family. If he had a crisis or felt down then, he would have no choice but to keep it to himself.

Dan keeping everything in his head was never a good idea; it would get too much and he’d be unable to cope. Even when I was away, I’d make sure to keep in contact with him so he could talk to me if he needed to.

I knew what he’d said about me saving him all those years ago, and I believed it. I’d seen the change with my very own eyes; he was so much happier these days. Even despite him being a lot better, I knew he still needed me. It was at times like this when I saw it; I saw his younger self shining through.

You can never completely leave your past self behind. He’d helped heal a hole in my heart from the loss of a good friend, but there were times I still felt it like it were yesterday. We both needed each other and nothing was going to change that.


End file.
